One Easy Thing You Can Do Now to Help Your Baby Sleep Better at Night

by Colleen de Bellefonds on May 3, 2017

Colleen de Bellefonds

About the Author

Colleen de Bellefonds is the Senior Editor of WhatToExpect.com. Follow her on Twitter @ColleenCYNC.

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Stocksy

Every parent has done it before: When a little one starts fussing on a long flight, car ride or dinner at a restaurant, sometimes the only solution is to offer a smartphone or tablet. Indeed, it’s pretty much impossible and impractical these days to avoid exposing kids to all technology; even the Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has acknowledged this in its most recent screen time guidelines. Still, it’s easy to go overboard with touchscreens — and a new study shows that overdoing it may make babies and toddlers sleep worse at night.

What the study looked at

Experts already knew that TV could impact sleep quality and duration for kids of all ages, but they wanted to find out if the same was true for touchscreen use in babies and toddlers. An online survey was given to 715 British parents of kids ages 6 months to 36 months. The researchers asked parents how often their kids were exposed to touchscreens and TV. They then asked about the babies’ and toddlers’ daytime and nighttime sleep patterns, including how long on average they slept during the day and night, how long it took them to fall asleep, and how often they woke up during the night. The authors then compared the two sets of answers to find patterns, taking into account other factors that could impact the results (like the kids’ ages and how much TV they watched).

What the study found

First off, touchscreen use is incredibly common: Three in four kids between the ages of 6 months and 3 years used a touchscreen on a daily basis — a number the authors say is in line with other research. That rate increases from 51 percent among 6- to 11-month-olds, for an average of 8.5 minutes per day, to 95 percent among 25- to 36-month-olds, for an average of 45 minutes per day.

In addition, the more time kids used touchscreens, the less time they slept overall: For every hour of time spent with a smartphone or tablet, little ones slept for 15.6 minutes less. Frequently using these technologies decreased the amount of time kids slept at night, increased the time they slept during the day, and increased the amount of time it took them to fall asleep at night. Screen time did not, however, affect the number of times kids woke up at night.

Of course this study was relatively small and asked parents to self-report their kids’ media and sleep habits, which means parents could have under- or overestimated, skewing the data. Still, the results do jive with other studies on children’s media habits.

What it means for parents

You know sleep is essential to a child’s developing brain; regularly having inconsistent bedtimes and not sleeping enough in the first couple years of life have been shown to result in cognitive problems later in life. However you shouldn’t fret if your child isn’t sleeping well: About 20 to 30 percent of all kids have troubles sleeping in the first couple years of life, and 60 percent of kids have abnormal sleep patterns (short sleepers, early wakers, overall poor sleepers). All of these issues usually work themselves out by about 6 to 7 years of age.

That said, there is a simple way to help ensure kids sleep better — by limiting the time they spend with your smartphone or tablet. Your best bet is to stick to the AAP’s latest screen time recommendations, which suggest:

Kids under 18 months: Try to avoid all screen time aside from video chats. But if you’re in an emergency situation (like you need to distract a fussy baby in a tight space), go ahead and use an iPhone or iPad for everyone’s sanity. (Just try not to fall back on it every time your little one has a meltdown.)

Age 2 and up: Limit screen time to one hour per day of quality programs.

No matter your baby or toddler’s age, remember: Your little one looks up to you, and an iPhone or iPad can only teach so much on its own. As with so much during this stage, your child will learn more if you’re there to help guide him or her through whatever’s on that screen and apply its lessons to the real world.

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